Isabella the witch continued to cackle nervously as a nasty habit. Her evil plans had backfired. The magic sands she previously stirred up in her cauldron had stopped when her puppet dummy had been melted to nothing in the sun. The zombies she raised from the dead not killed by Jed wandered the desert roaming for food. Her master manipulation of the situation had been severed much like the human skin she used in the manufacture of her most enchanted designer handbags, clothing, and brooms.

The sands of her cauldron spilled out onto the floor. She strained her popping joints, and sockets to place it back on the boiler pad after successfully emptying it. A large pantry was the next destination for her old bones.

“Hehehe I’m 103, and it’s really beginning to catch up to me,” she said, adding snake-oil to the pot as a base ingredient.

The next ingredient was an extra concentrated dose of raw apple cider vinegar, a frog's tail followed after a puppy tail wart flower. She dumped in extra salt, triple MSG spice mix with the chopped onions dumped in the cauldron, with a little on the floor. Isabella finally dropped in a hefty slab of choice cut red meat. It was lowered into the cook just like Edward’s body had been lowered one step closer to the final destination. Killin Hood’s Labrador retriever licked the salt, and ignored the pepper, while garlic chunks fell from a chopping block under the tablecloth.

“Bad dog,” scolded Isabella, furiously shaking a ladle to the cavern's ceiling in frustration at her recent failures.

She added extra spite to the brewing broth from all the hours of stitching and bewitching now wasted from being defeated. All the hours spent on her monstrous creation terminated with a single continuous stream of jungle juice sprayed from that son of a bitch. The dummy had been destroyed, and now she was really annoyed.

The swampy green cauldron creation continued to bubble into a boil. The room was getting steamy with the humidity of a portal to a different environment beginning to form. A sound of Dodo birds squawking was overtaken by smelting steel and coal smoke of another dimension in the industrial revolution.

“Isabella, I need you to complete my heart procedure, it can't wait much longer before the meat goes cold,” called Killin Hood, from a nearby room.

“Yes I’m coming,” she replied.

The vacation portal snapped shut leaving the room smelling of seashells. Isabella got on her cane and put on her pointed witches hat. Today's robe was a traditional style, but also composed of wild material she had harvested from another planet.. She bent and twisted a dial to reduce the heat to a simmer and limped out of the room with items ready for the next operation.

A nest of spiders crawled out of hiding as the dog followed. In another area of the lab Killin Hood had partially strapped himself in. His hands were free enough to check a crystal pocket watch. It was almost time to turn himself into a royal procedure. The device he sat on was a special blood converter, heart transplanter, spleen ripper, and kidney pilferer; all in one. The thing also looked like a crossover of an electric chair, and a toilet bowl. An ancient robot claw hung in front of many copper wires leading to the bloodbath.

A light rapping on the doorway.

“Here I am dear,” said Isebella, hobbling in.

The walls rumbled with the refrigerators' cooling units sounding like they were drawing dangerously low. She opened one revealing shelfs full of many things still beating. The harvested organs had been placed on trays and wrapped in paper with electric wires escaping the cracks. It was only that and the continuous drip of some kind of liquid in the otherwise silent room as the witch hunted for the right specimen.

“Good time to advance our operations to the capital, so no more lollygagging around. I trust the loose threads have been cut,” said Killin Hood.

“Ohh yes our boy is dropped inside a mining system created by our marvelous minds, and we can’t forget you've got the Queen now on a short lease hehe,” said Isabella, still searching.

“OK, let’s forget about the mind and worry about organs. Do you need your glasses?. There over here next to the radio so turn the music on and let’s get this show on the road,” said Killin Hood, removing a large stake from a drawer on the machine that would soon penetrate him.

A cart was wheeled beside the organ operator 3000. Isabella’s fingers fell over the surgical instruments, and she handed him a large steak knife. A scraping screeching noise intensified. She turned on the sound system that began playing minor key organ music from speakers decorated with shrunken heads. His blade continued cutting into a steak in addition to the plate. A pool of red blood formed through the cracks to the floor of stone. Killin Hood took the rare chunk of seared flesh into his chompers.

“Can never do an operation on an empty stomach mmmm,” said Killin Hood, between bites of what the witch had cooked him.

“You can say that again boss,” said Isabella, also beginning to drool with the nearby lab.

She broke eye contact with the juicy steak, and moved over to a row of several operating tables. One held a body covered with a fresh sheet, and the other was empty. The grime from the removal of Edward’s heart still covered the empty metal. She grabbed hold of a key from the foot locker, and hobbled to the refrigerators.

The door squeaked open again. A mouse headed out the back of the unit to a hole in the wall. The cooling crystals inside the icebox added a cold mist to the room. A beat sounded, a steady rhythm from inside the deep covered baker.

“Hehehehehe,” she laughed, removing the cover.

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The king’s heart was revealed in the sandwich meat drawer hooked to tubes inside. She grabbed a hold of it with fingers. It still beat after she unhooked the first wires. Killin Hood set down the cut in half plate, and angled the stake towards himself. Isabella prepared the royal heart into the operational claw for an ancient procedure. The lights flickered as it commenced without anesthesia or painkillers.

Meanwhile Edward was covered in filth in the dungeons. He lay limp in a cell, dressed in rags, while his stump was chained to a hook in the mold covered wall. He remained half dead from his heart being removed, and replaced with another of dubious quality. The guards had joked this was his vacation while he recovered, but he hadn’t heard them in his near comatose condition. A scream pierced through the dirt, and floors separating his body from the organ. He was still psychically connected to it and the perfect strings played to wake him.

“Arggg..cough…sputter…hack,” he cried, with a chest suddenly full of suppressed pain.

Edward keeled over to the hard floor, sending the roaches running for cover.

“Thud.”

A dust cloud was stirred and smelled of sulfur.

“I’m alive,” he choked, attempting to pull himself up by the mattress but only pulling out clumps of straw.

The candle outside the cell had been snuffed. Edward’s eyes opened again. The haze filled the cell that warbled, and he saw pretty colors while something scraped the stone floor outside the crystal reinforced bars. He finally managed to pull himself back onto the dirty mattress. With no sheets or blankets he fell back asleep a second time.

The former king regained consciousness back in the core of the planet's hollow center where only one other had escaped. The knight who had escaped had also returned bringing a lot of reinforcements to save him. The wind blew at the advancing columns of soldiers coming to save him. Edward was tied high on the only remaining large section of castle ice once intended to be the new capital. He was wounded with wires that filled with his blood and guts. He screamed, but the fluids in his lungs stopped him from producing loud enough vocals.

As the nightmare continued he stopped trying when he glanced to the other side of him. The wicked witch held a special ceremony dagger full of the hearts of cards. She let a sample collect into a silver dish marked “Fido’s food,” without pricking too much. She turned and raised the sparkling bowl that sizzled in the moonlight and let it flow into a purple hollowed skull. The sacrificial objects clanked flying to the top of the temple across the way like it had been sucked by a turbo magnet field. The crystals sparkled like stars along the triangular object on the roof of the temple he had previously escaped.

“Hehehe look at me boy,” the witch cackled, turning his head back around with her cold boney fingers.

Isabella used her cane to locate, and sway over a trunk hanging from rope tied to a handle. The over popped open to more clanking, and clanging.

“Where did I store that?” she asked herself.

Edward spit a chunk of his lungs at her but it overshot, failing off the side of the wall. It was frigid enough to freeze spit and cause frostbite past his limited vision, however his body continued screaming with the hot sensation of burning.Edward wriggled and fought back trying to break free, but that only caused a hit of excruciating pain like being magically mind fucked that totally immobilized him.

“Ahh there it is,” cried the witch, holding a crystal ball in her bony hands while kicking the trunk shut and out of sight. “Ahem.. is this thing working,” the crystal ball amp provided a temporary ear destroying feedback as she tapped it. “Ok knight’s listen here the Queen will greet you she will marry Killin Hood of Killin Wood soon spread news to the surface. Before you leave however see here this ex royal has betrayed the throne but never had the royal blood anyway to serve. His entire life is a farce before your very eyes, you were all tricked to serve a monster and I will prove it with a test,” she announced.

Her old hands locked the ancient hollowed skull with the crystal ball locking underneath the jaw. Soon neon lights lit the inside pool project a stream of big block letters into the northern lights.

“NOT A ROYAL!” The DNA test read read.

The mass formation of knights could be heard gasping at the big reveal of the results from all the way across the valley.

“He.. I mean I’m so very sorry you were tricked, but science reveals the facts now let’s test the real deal royal ruler,” Isabella said, dumping the pool of plain blood from Edward.

The witch hobbled on her cane while holding the ritual machine under one shoulder. A controller emerged from the robe tied to a wrist band and she aimed the device dead on Edward while cackling pressing buttons. The nearby wall exploded and the cyborg Queen Elizabethy the 13th entered.

“Nooo,” cried Edward.

The former approaching knights of his had stopped their march to save him. Isabella smiled and put her dried lips to her crystal ball. The Queen remained like a block of ice as blood was drawn.

“Royalty.” were the words the blood placed in the clearing sky this time.

“Now go knock them out honey with my advanced spells and cosmetics..Hehehe,” cackled Isabella, now pressing the forward arrow button on the remote with reckless abandon.

The cyborg fearlessly stomped forward off the wall composed of crystal ice. It fell tumbling into the air while the witch cackled, and played with her keys behind. The royal cyborg on a jet-pack shot forward with the magma thrusters blackening and melting the ice blocks behind. Queen Elizabethy barrel rolled over the core’s single moon forever burning in full. She flew over her subjects taking a knee deep in the white snow.

Isabella hobbled off to join her power slave that would soon marry Killin Hood without her own mind. She found it amusing that their chosen method of seizing power was actually the most moral of all things considered. While Killin had long been the name of their company they were actually taking things the path of least resistance instead of a hard revolution.

Later Edward woke up abandoned alone. He was still tied to the side of the castle while the others all followed the Queen. His lips and limbs had frozen, but the pain he felt wasn’t numbed. The moonlight was the only thing keeping out the night. The mass of armed torches in the distance had now completely fallen away leaving the valley.

The cold had increased into a frost bitten zone. A single wolf howled away on the cliff under the temple above the castle. The crystals still sparked into the sky lights above. Edward prepared his remaining brain cells for the coming final curtain for himself. A single tear fell from one of his eyes and was immediately frozen solid.

There was something rustling the guard rail. A skeleton in armor floated into vision that had become heavily distorted.

“Eddy is that you love,” called a voice that sounded familiar and also incredibly smokey.

His vision faded to black while Nancy blindly searched for him, but ended up tumbling off the wall.

He much later woke up in the dungeon under Killin Manor. The bars had opened, but his chain would not let him escape.

“The orders in to transport him to the mines,” announcing a gruff henchman, walking through the open gate with a key.